Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://ongig.com/blog/hiring/an-irish-blog-hunting-for-a-tech-job-in-silicon-valley

<comment><USER2> Job sites are basically designed to exploit clueless people (on both sides of the transaction). You're not clueless, or you are shortly to become less clueless, so you should never be involved with a job site.

Draw a rectangle, where one side is the number of people with hiring authority you've had coffee with recently and the other side is your attractiveness as a candidate. As the area of the rectangle gets bigger, the number of job offers you get will increase. (And, if you're savvy about it, the attractiveness of them will as well.)

If you already have Google on your resume, increasing your attractiveness as a candidate is probably not as good ROI as lining up more coffee dates. They are really easy to arrange: start by knowing at least one person in Silicon Valley who has hiring authority. (Your local Internet has a few hundred options.) Ask for introductions.

The custom is for a short two-line email: "Hey Bob, meet Dave. Dave is a smart chap, he previously worked at Google. You guys should get in touch." Dave then sends Bob an email inviting him to get coffee. (There are other options: lunch and dinner work, too, but asking someone to coffee is basically the smallest imposition you could possibly make which still gets you face time and you want face time.)

Or, if you're opposed to networking (which seems oddly common among engineers), put on a T-shirt which says "I am looking for an engineering job. Previous work experience: Google" and walk down Castro during lunch hour. You'll probably get three offers.

<comment><USER3> _"Or, if you're opposed to networking (which seems oddly common among engineers), put on a T-shirt which says "I am looking for an engineering job. Previous work experience: Google" and walk down Castro during lunch hour. You'll probably get three offers."_

Yeah, except he didn't do engineering at Google -- he was a "data quality evaluator" contract employee. He's also looking for a position in _"quality assurance, data analytics, total quality management [or] desktop support"_. He also never mentions code, engineering, or another hard technical skill.

That's not to criticize the guy or take away from his accomplishments -- he could be a great potential employee. But just because someone worked at Google doesn't automatically make them a gold-nugget hire. There are a lot of people at Google who are doing grunt work. Even in an exceptional job market, I'd hope that people aren't being interviewed simply because they have "Google" on their resume without regard for context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was looking for a job in the Bay Area in September (similar situation, non- US citizen). I never used a "job search" site, though, I just researched companies I was interested in and applied through their sites. This worked out fine... most places replied quite quickly to my application. I don't really see any advantage to using a site like Monster.com. If I haven't heard of a company, I probably don't want to work there.

<comment><USER5> For all you guys targeting startups, do you have a recommended location for finding them? There are plenty of amazing startups around that I have never heard of. I feel like I just don't have the time to keep up or am unaware of some magic resource that some of you must have.

I am mostly curious about companies specific to the bay area but a larger scope would certainly be welcome.

<comment><USER6> Tech meetups are a goldmine if you're interested in startups. Maybe you won't find employees from the startup itself there but if you interested in say, erlang, and go to an erlang meetup you can very easily ask people there if they've heard of any interesting erlang startups. You'll probably find some people who will say something along the lines of oh yeah, I recently heard about company x who's doing y, it sounds pretty interesting actually.

Then you can do some research on company x and try to get in touch with someone there.

<comment><USER7> Great advice guys. Thanks a million.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I shit you not -- if you are in San Francisco I can take you out partying and you'll have a job you love the next day <\-- this is how retarded easy it is to get a software job in this city -- EVERYONE is hiring

<comment><USER9> It's odd. All these businesses are fighting over a small amount of talent. Why not just have a remote office in San Francisco and focus development elsewhere in the country?

This happens a lot with agencies, where they locate their sales, marketing, even designers in say New York or London, meanwhile the bulk of the company is elsewhere - in locations with high unemployment and lots of developers.

In those areas you might have 20, 30, maybe 40 developers all applying for a single position.

<comment><USER10> Because the valuations you would get headquartered in Silicon Valley seem to be far higher than you would get elsewhere.

I've built up a (profitable) tech startup in Canada in the last few years, and get valuations in the range of 20 times earnings or 2 times revenue. Respectable compared to the S&P 500, but laughable compared to what seems to be the norm in the valley (or at least what seems to be the norm based on what I read here)

Not that i'm complaining, i love canada, but something to consider.

<comment><USER11> any developer openings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey guys, thanks for all the responses to my blog. Some sound advice that I will definitely take on board. The idea of targeting IT startups is something that I will get onto asap. I set up a linkedIn profile shortly after arrival as it seems to be one of the biggest and most used methods on networking here in the U.S.Here is the link if any of you are interested; <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mervyn-fealy/42/a28/388> . Feel free to connect with me on there.

</comment><comment><USER12> In the Bay Area, high tech jobs hunt you (at least right now). Fill in your LinkedIn profile like the first comment suggests, build your reputation (GitHub, StackOverflow) and you'll start getting approached by recruiters.

<comment><USER13> If you want recruiters, just call them. You need a linkedin or a resume, but the other steps are more useful to employers. (You can also email me, firstname.lastname@example.com -- I just worked with seven in my job search, and can pass on the three I recommend.)

<comment><USER14> I'm just now at the point where I refuse resumes and calls from recruiters.

It'd be better to figure out companies you want to work for and figure out how to get in touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually have a pretty similar situation. I am Irish, living in California after just finishing up in Dublin City University (I was probably one of Mervyn's lab tutors at some point!) and I'm also on the J1 visa.

The difference is that I found a job before I left Ireland (made the visa application a lot easier). I responded to a post on the "Who's Hiring?" thread here on HN a few months back and landed a gig in an awesome startup in Los Angeles called Factual.

HN is a truly invaluable resource for job hunting.

<comment><USER7> That's very interesting. I reckon I might have benifited from your tutelage at some point. I am definitely going to use HN as a resource for job seeking. Appreciate the feedback. How are you enjoying life in LA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> careers.stackoverflow.com, and the monthly HN "who's hiring" post.

<comment><USER7> Appreciate the advice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just wanted to use this opportunity to tell everyone; I setup an experimental web site at <http://www.jobrupt.com> to help people challenge the companies to create or open a job position for them by telling how they can add value. Would love to see that it will be useful to at least one person on earth. Except the design which sucks, I would like to hear if that will at all be useful to anyone or how to modify it to make it useful.

<comment><USER7> That's a great idea for a website. It could be potentially very useful for job seekers in my situation. It would be interesting to hear what companies feedback is on this type of contact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Instead of hitting the pavement digitally, might I suggest mainly browsing the websites of startups, checking here on HN (HelloFax for example is hiring!), and then going to every event/meeting you can slide your way into. I think that would pay off a ton more than any job posting site.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback on my blog. Appreciate the advice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cool stuff, I'm thinking of doing my internship over there (CS major from Holland) so I'll be following this!

</comment><comment><USER20> I skimmed this, but then I saw Madison, WI jump out. Here's a warning: I'd bet $100 the company was Epic Systems. They're a godawful employer [1]. Please please please think multiple times and talk to previous employees before accepting a job there. They're infamous for hiring devs on h1bs, refusing to sponsor them for a green card, and working their asses off while paying as little as possible and well under market. They also use, at least last time I checked, the world's shittiest tech stack: tens of millions of lines of vb6 and maybe 30-50MM lines of M/cachescript/mumps. The world's shittiest language by a damn long shot [2:4]. Undocumented and non unit tested (last I heard), though they do hire, at least when I was there, one full time tester for every two devs. At first you'll think wow -- they're dedicated to quality! No, that's just the minimum it takes to make barely usable software there.

The other downside to their antiquated tech stack is after putting in a couple years there, you will _still_ have no marketable skills because you'll be the same as a brand new dev straight out of school. Everyone else will have two years in on either the .net or the java or the web (rails/django/node/html5) or the ios/android tech stacks. You'll still be starting at ground zero.

Further, my best guess is their devs have something like 25-35% annual turnover. That is not a joke. The best part is if you try to leave, your ass will be stuck in Madison WI. There's really not that many tech companies there so you'll have to relocate. They'll brag about paid sabbaticals after 5 years. So few people last that long I'd bet it's one of the cheapest benefits they have.

Finally, they have a comprehensive NDA/noncompete and since it's Wisconsin, it's very enforceable and they can and do aggressively enforce it.

Just don't do it. If you poke around the internet even a bit you'll see legions of disgruntled ex employees.

I could go on; they have this theory that anyone can be trained to code so your interview is pretty much just your gpa. They then put you through a 1-3 month internal bootcamp to train you to code. You can, um, imagine the sort of code this churns out...

See also [5:6].

[1] [http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Epic-Systems-Corporation- Re...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Epic-Systems-Corporation- Reviews-E35163.htm)

[2] <http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/2417/60874.aspx#60874>

[3] <http://thedailywtf.com/comments/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS.aspx>

[4] <http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/2402/60158.aspx#60158>

[5] [http://www.indeed.com/forum/cmp/Epic-Systems/Epic-Systems- Sa...](http://www.indeed.com/forum/cmp/Epic-Systems/Epic-Systems-Salaries- Bonuses-Benefits/t12947)

[6] <http://epic-systems-rant.blogspot.com/>

<comment><USER21> yeah, every company should be checked on glassdoor....will let you know if it's a company that's a slave driver, or if they are pay below market rates or if they expect you to work long hours

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> protip: pick keywords for the tech stack you want to work in, whether {.net, java, ios/android, web:{rails,django,node,js,html5}}. Hook up if this then that (<http://ifttt.com> ) to your google talk account. Every 15 minutes it will poll craigslist jobs looking for your keywords then im to your google talk account; it's wonderful. I think they also support email endpoints and maybe rss.

<comment><USER21> that's fine if you want to go work at half pay...cragislist is one of the worst sites when it comes to cheapskates</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I know a few high-level languages. Is it still worth learning C++? - <AUTHOR> I specialize in Python, but I know a fair bit of Go, Elixir, PHP, and JavaScript (and its flavors).<p>That said, would learning C++ add to my [market] value as a developer, and/or would it allow me to do things I otherwise could not with my current set of languages? If not, is there any reason at all why I should consider C++? <comment> T-A C/C++ is still the tool of choice when you need to eke out max performance from the available hardware. That could be because the hardware is weak (maybe an embedded system) or because you need real time performance (game engines come to mind) or because you need to perform very large calculations (e.g. train neural networks, simulate fluid dynamics).

When the going gets tough, the tough reach for their C/C++ compilers. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> If you don't know C, I would recommend to invest time in learning that first. Learning C++ would certainly not be a waste of time. However, if you want to be efficient about the use of your learning time, choose the technology/languages that would come in handy for what you would like to do next.

C++ is seeing a revival of sorts due to IoT/Automotive/Fintech software etc. So from a career perspective it would be a good investment of time (if, for instance, you are inclined to work in those fields).

However, keep in mind what is being called Modern C++ (c++11 and later) is a completely different beast than C++ which is uttered in the C/C++ sense.

My prediction is that the reality of C++ in the near future would be a mishmash of old and new C++ ...and it would go the Java way -- heavily adopted but a _lot_ of bad code written by confused practitioners.

<comment><USER3> Your prediction is very true, especially in the Finance/Auto/Embedded industry, while oftenly the work horse C++ code were written 10 years ago using old C++, you write modern C++ code around them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> c/c++ adds to the market value of a dev iff that dev needs it for their job. Same story with every other language. Javascript won't help you get a ruby job for instance. You might consider learning C & assembly, because they'll give you a greater appreciation for what your computer is doing closer to the metal. You don't have to be good, but learning to do at least basic stuff can help you be better with other languages.

<comment><USER5> Everything you have said here is correct but I would like to add one thing.

Someone who writes a higher level language (like python, php or ruby) and can understand the internals (written in C not C++) can at times have a distinct advantage.

Not only are you able to/capable of understanding what is going on at a deeper level you now have the ability to optimize things in a way that would not normally be possible. On the PHP side I have used C to do some low level optimization that would not have been possible otherwise, and a long time ago simply get some features to work properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> C++ is fundamentally different insofar as it has no garbage collection. Which means it's different enough that learning it will be educational (e.g. it means different forms of resource cleanup are possible: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/03/10/compare- contrast/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/03/10/compare-contrast/)).

On the other hand, it's also a massive language, and modern C++ is very different than the legacy code bases you'll encounter in the real world. So it's a large time commitment to learn it well enough to code well in anger.

If you have the time try skimming a tutorial, and doing some exercises, enough that you can get the differences in mindset. But it's probably not the most efficient way to increase earnings, if that's all you care about.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's always worth it to learn more languages. Every developer should learn C imho (it's a very widely used, influential language and it's pretty small). Seeing how C++ is essentially a superset of C, you might as well check it out after you learn C.

Also, don't focus on your "market value", focus on becoming a better developer. You're a craftsman, not a piece of merchandise - have some pride in your craft. (not meaning to say you don't, I just liked the sound of that)

</comment><comment><USER8> I concur with Rannath, if you don't have a C++ job, or you don't want to contribute to some C++ free software, my advice would be to learn C.

<comment><USER4> Also: C/C++ is the king if you want to make games, then C# (thanks to unity). Don't use java for games. Unless it's an android game, even then use the native API if you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's hard to answer this question without knowing what it is you are doing or want to do. Python + C++ can be a good combo in the computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, etc spaces. But for say a normal web app developer, C++ doesn't add much. I haven't written any C++ since school.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd rather learn C.</comment>


Belgian woman, 24, granted euthanasia death over depression - <AUTHOR> http://m.nydailynews.com/news/world/belgium-woman-24-granted-euthanasia-death-depression-article-1.2276577 <comment><USER2> My girlfriend intended to suicide herself in December 2014. This was a few months before she met me in March 2015. She's mostly better now.

There are reasons that people feel depressed. American psychiatry does not treat causes, it experiments with drugs that hopefully help the undesired symptoms go away. [1]

I wonder what the mental health system is like in Belgium. If it's anything like the American state-of-the-art, it's ineffective at best.

[1] [https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-doctor- isnt-...](https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-doctor-isnt-in/)

<comment><USER3> In several countries in eastern and western Europe it is pretty much the same (as the American psychiatry). My brother has been depressed for quite some time (about 10-ish years) now and has seen psychiatrists in, for example, The Netherlands. The treatment there was indeed trying out a few different drugs to see what the effect of these is.

Fortunately, he is steadily (but slowly) improving but not thanks to drugs and psychiatry(he mostly stopped with any prescription drug 6 months after starting because it didn't do anything besides numbing numbing him).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was about 6 months ago. Apparently, she later changed her mind. (I can't find any good sources, though)

</comment><comment><USER5> When I see things like this, it makes me really think to the root of who we are as people and how depression plays into our role as human beings. I often wish it was possible to provide a genetic "vaccine" to depression in early embryonic stages of human development. If there was some way to encourage growth of 5-HTT alleles (longer alleles equal less prone to depression) we could see people born seemingly "immune" to this state of being.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems a little strange that the woman can decide weather to end her life somewhat unilaterally.

Giving such power to her when she is in depression is dangerous to say the least. The _what if she recovers_ question remains.

<comment><USER7> The what if she doesn't recover question would have been laying around too.

The woman that can decide weather: [http://comicsalliance.com/files/2015/08/storm- feat-630x420.j...](http://comicsalliance.com/files/2015/08/storm- feat-630x420.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Decide weather, really? Really? A comic reference, are you serious? I mean, this is kind of a serious topic so your comment would seem inappropriate, but I appreciate the helpfulness towards language learners. It's just the person making the mistake would not even get the joke if they don't know it's supposed to be spelled 'whether'.

Seems ridiculous anyhow that anyone would seek permission for suicide. If somebody is so dependent, allowing it is obviously grossly negligent. If _she doesn 't recover_, her death is a problem that will eventually solve it self, it just takes patience.

<comment><USER7> Take it easy, I made my point in the first line.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Used Iphones? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, i am really interested in developing applications for the iPhone, but the snag i have here is that i am a developer living in west africa, where there are no Iphones sold at last legally by Apple or Telco's. I would like to know where an unlocked iPhone can be bought, or if anyone here has a used/ new iphone for sale. I would really appreciate your help.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> If your app is not GPS-related, you can try getting an iPod Touch, which is like iPhone minus the phone and GPS hardware.

I had also read that in HongKong you can get an unlocked iPhone, but for $700.

You will need a Mac for the SDK. First, get the Mac, download the free SDK, and get your app working in the Simulator (part of SDK). THEN, get the iPod Touch.

Code first. Buy hardware as late as possible.

<comment><USER3> I don't think there's 3G in his location (africa). So if he's buying an iPod Touch, he might as well go for a used-non-3G version of the iPhone (refering to the first version) which are cheap now. I guess those old iPhones (non-3G) have unlocking software that's freely available.

I've seen sites selling sim-cards that unlock locked phones. So he can use something like that too.

P.S: I don't own an iPhone (coz I can't afford it) nor used one. So my situation is pretty close to his :)</comment></comment>


Selling England by the offshore pound - <AUTHOR> http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry <comment><USER2> First for any non-UK'ers who happen to be having trouble with the terminology used:

If you own the "freehold" on a property it means you own the building and the land

If you own "leasehold" you have a sort of long-term lease on the property for a fixed and agreed upon length of time (could be 50 years, could be 100 years).

On a slightly different but related note (i.e not necessarily foreign owned properties) the Private Eye article only shows the data for England, its actually a good deal worse in Scotland where huge chunks of the country are owned privately and indeed sometimes the owners are not even known. Take a look at the map in the link below for a bleak picture [http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/10/scotland- land...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/10/scotland-land-rights)

<comment><USER3> As someone who bought a city property last year the Scottish system is lightyears ahead of England. I don't have to worry about leasehold, freehold etc - I bought my flat, it is mine. Buying through solicitors and the associated regulation produces a much more civilised system without gazumping (or at least much less of it).

If you've ever spent much time in the Highlands you'll realise how remote and limited it actually is. You're realistically always going to have very large tracts of land owned by individuals or groups because it requires economies of scale to run. Short of making almost all of it national parks I'm not convinced the current state of play is that bad. Plus there is the right to roam legislation enabling people to actually use the land, it isn't like you're not allowed to walk on it.

<comment><USER4> Political sorts in Scotland like to produce statistics like "70% of the land area of Scotland is owned by 500 people!" in order to shock people into supporting their generally redistributive political views - it is endlessly brought up.

But when you factor in land area value - if you could distort the area of Scotland such that the land value and the area were 1:1 - then suddenly it doesn't look anything like as bad. As the market says that owning a 4 bedroom flat in the west end of Glasgow in fact is worth more then 10,000 acres of land in the highlands.

Given as well that Scotland has very robust "right to roam" \- people can walk on privately owned land as long as it isn't your back garden - and also laws to allow "wild camping" and so on, it just doesn't seem like that big of an issue to me either.

But nationalists in every country become obsessed with who owns the country, especially if it is people outwith the country, people against their cause etc - the SNP are no different.

<comment><USER5> I'm not Scottish but I live in the Highlands. I think it's less to do with nationalism and more to do with to do with security of tenure. A lot of rural housing and farmland is owned by these large estates. The houses that have not been converted to holiday lets are often badly maintained and leased on very short term tenancies by absentee landlords. Tenant farmers on these estates have the additional problem that they can be also be evicted from the farmland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those looking to research this further, there was also an excellent piece on the Private Eye podcast which explores this in more detail:

[https://soundcloud.com/privateeyenews/page-94-episode-8](https://soundcloud.com/privateeyenews/page-94-episode-8)

<comment><USER7> Private Eye is doing the work our press should be doing. They are a true bastion of freedom shining a light into the dark cesspool of the UK establishment.

Subscribe to support them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Incidentally, if we are going to have global trade deals like TTIP and TPP, which roll in all sorts of domestic regulations in the name of a level playing field for global trade, I'd also like to see rules included which level the playing field for democratic governments, campaigners and ordinary citizens. For instance land ownership comes with liabilities, I can't see how it is possible for that to be enforceable if the land can be owned by a brass plate in the Cayman Islands. What reason is there, other than vested interests, not to include some sort of transparent ownership of property and assets in these international deals?

</comment><comment><USER9> It's almost as people are buying property in Britain as if it's some kind of international ponzi scheme for the ultra rich...

<comment><USER10> Britain is hardly alone in this. Prices in Vancouver and Toronto are absolutely insane when one considers incomes in the region. Sensible minds have been claiming a crash for years but property prices continue to go up. Funny thing is that the crazy housing in Britain/Canada make Bay area housing appear like a good deal :-p

If anyone has a book/documentary suggestion on understanding what is going on, would appreciate it.

<comment><USER11> Central London is really the only place in Britain that makes the Bay area look OK in comparison.

According to Numbeo.com's cost of living comparisons, SF is a bit more expensive to rent in than London, and a bit cheaper to buy in. But of course, these are very generalised/averaged numbers, not looking at anything as specific as "the bay area".

      SF
      Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre 			3,321.03 $
      Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre 		2,580.00 $
      Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre 		6,393.33 $
      Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre 		4,928.57 $
      Price per SQM to Buy Apartment in City Centre 	14,819.28 $
      Price per SQM to Buy Apartment Outside of Centre 	9,543.88 $

      London
      Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre 			2,510.87 $
      Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre 		1,700.43 $
      Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre 		5,099.81 $
      Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre 		2,985.64 $
      Price per SQM to Buy Apartment in City Centre 	23,868.09 $
      Price per SQM to Buy Apartment Outside of Centre 	12,413.72 $

Obviously there are specific stupidly-expensive areas in London, and indeed outside London in the UK.

<comment><USER12> Either I have a very different idea of what London's "City Centre" is, or the numbers above for London look quite low. That said, for some people, Zone 4 is "central" and for others only Zone 1 is. Curious how the SF numbers compare in this regard.

<comment><USER13> Traditionally Zone 1-2 is central.

Anyone who calls Zone 4 central is deluded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why does this matter? Somebody's going to own the land. If English people don't want foreign companies owning it, then they should make that illegal. If they don't have a stranglehold on who must pay tax to the UK government then they should tax something else they they do have control over instead. If these things have side effects that are even worse then welcome to the free market - you have to make yourself attractive to taxpayers if you want them to come and pay tax.

Australian have similar concerns. They don't like rich foreigners buying their property. Yet somehow they still allow it.

<comment> m-i-l I don't think the concern is about foreign ownership _per se_ , but rather the lack of transparency associated with the offshore companies, particularly in relation to potential tax (Stamp Duty) avoidance and money laundering[0].

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/25/london- housin...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/25/london-housing- market-launder-offshore-tax-havens)

<comment><USER15> agreed, I looked around the area I live in Kent and it looks like people buying a house "tax efficiently" ahem, via companies in the Channel islands, rather than oligarchs buying up swathes of the town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This explains why (my) rent is so high - and why the first time buyer is a thing of the past in London.

</comment><comment><USER17> Most of the "foreigners" seem to Jersey, British Virgin Isles, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Isle of Man. Are they just tax dodges from UK citizens?

<comment><USER18> Many of them will be British. But regardless of nationality, there's a logic in domiciling your holding company for British assets in a tax haven familiar with the intricacies of British property law. And Crown Dependencies make up a surprisingly large percentage of reliable tax havens...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not all bad. For example I found Giorgio Armani to hold a 4 million pound property, based in Italy, the italian high-fashion company of course. The map isn't a list of only tax-avoiding cayman-island listed oil doller financed foreign ownership that you could criticise.

Another fun one is the new American embassy, 64 million pounds. Proprietor listed as 'United states of america', country listed as 'unable to confirm', haha. One of the few freeholds on the map by the way and one of the biggest, too. Not finished if anyone's wondering.

Other than that, the majority of the map is pretty insane. Isle of man, panama, cayman, jersey, it just keeps on going.

</comment><comment><USER20> Anna Powell-Smith... I thought I recognised that name. She's done quite a few of these interesting visualisations. Her website is [http://anna.ps/](http://anna.ps/)

</comment><comment><USER21> A lot of the properties in my area are addressed as "Airspace above ...". Any idea what this is about?

<comment><USER22> At a guess - flats / apartments located above an area of land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sadly not a new concept. The UK has been on the slide for a hell of a while.

Genesis from 1973: Selling England by the Pound

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rn9tzirks4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rn9tzirks4)

</comment><comment><USER23> Is this a case of wealth UK residents fleeing to less tax-greedy locales and leaving the land for whomever is willing to deal with inland revenue?

<comment><USER24> Like Phil Collins of the band that made "Selling England by the Pound".

Edit: What's with the thing where I get downvoted and my comment shows as downvoted for other people (or at least for me when I'm not logged in), but not for me? It's like a kind of half-arsed shadowban or something. Bug?

<comment><USER25> Peter Gabriel was the lead singer at the time that album was made. Phil didn't join until much later.

<comment><USER26> Collins was already in the band (IIRC he may even have been a founding member). The difference is he wasn't yet the frontman – he was the drummer. Pre-Collins-fronted Genesis is way better though, IMO (I do like me some progressive rock, though).

<comment><USER23> The things I learn visiting here amaze me. I liked their music but never placed a group/faces to songs I saw one on MTV with PC as lead. I thought they formed the group with that format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Crocodile tears are being shed.

Britain has been enriching itself using outright aggression prior to WW2, and since then using its influence in the global monetary system.

Mexico, Bangladesh and india has been for years trying to pursuade the british govt to help them get all the black money locked up in the UK back to them. And I am not sure what is going on with all the Russian black money. The Saudis too use London to hide their petroldollars and so do countless african dictators and terrorist organiznations.

It will be sweet to watch when the chickens come home to roost.

<comment><USER28> Empire is of no relevance to British citizens today, or for a long time, whereas this is.

Also, I've never read anything about this mexican/bangladeshi/indian/russian/saudi black money that you're talking about—link?

<comment><USER29> The downvotes for the original poster in this thread are probably due to the rather vitriolic sounding language used.

But, setting that aside and responding to your question :

It's ironic that if you had ever followed Private Eye, you would have read all the details of money laundering through London; the original article is really about exactly that and how people can use anonymous companies (often in Nevis) to launder huge sums through London property and the lack of action by UK authorities even when egregious abuses take place.

So, a starting link is [http://www.private- eye.co.uk/registry](http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry) \- EXACTLY the one that this discussion is about.

<comment><USER7> Exactly - the UK is _the home_ of financial fraud. Many of the problems of tax evasion stem from their tax havens set up around the world.

The City is a cancer that is feeding on the entire world. The City needs exorcising from the UK. And like all parasites it would not survive without protection for long.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Performance Impact of Using dict() Instead of {} in CPython 2.7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.doughellmann.com/articles/misc/dict-performance/ <comment><USER2>
        > [tl;dr] Use {} to create dictionaries, especially if you are pre-populating them, unless the literal syntax does not work for your case.
        [...]
        > ...as a general principle I try to avoid code constructions I know to introduce performance hits.

This is not Pythonic. I appreciate the article and what it showed me, but I do not agree with the conclusion. Do whatever makes your code most readable. Sometimes this may be {}, and sometimes it may be dict(). Most code will not be in a performance-critical path.

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil".

</comment><comment><USER3> While it's nice to get a peek at the implementation details of CPython in this way, I doubt that dict(foo=bar, ...) is typically going to be part of a critical inner loop. It's much more likely to be executed just once before a loop, making this finding irrelevant for real optimization problems.

<comment><USER4> What are you using Python for? There are plenty of occations where I have made lists of dictionaries, e.g. when I have have large amounts of data that have to be outputted in a certain way, or if it's just logical to store dictionaries instead of instances of some custom class. No performance critical stuff though, and I've almost never used dict(), but still, calling this irrelevant for optimization is a bit harsh...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        {k: v for k, v in some_iterable}

I'd never seen that. Nice. :)

<comment><USER6> Dictionary comprehensions are pretty nice indeed, they're new in Python 2.7 so that might be why you've not seen them before ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you don't have the time to read through just jump here: [http://www.doughellmann.com/articles/misc/dict- performance/#...](http://www.doughellmann.com/articles/misc/dict- performance/#conclusions)

</comment><comment><USER8> Doug - thank you for this piece. It clearly took a lot of time to research/write and in addition to providing an interesting insight, provider a great look into disassembling and interpreters.

I would hope that over time insights like this combine with others to create a set of "best practices" across a language. After all, readability is largely tied to convention (multi-line ternary if statements excluded!).

The real benefit of these performance tweaks comes in those people writing libraries. After all, most of the matrix routines we depend on today still tie back to FORTRAN - amazing we are using 40 year old code!

Thanks again.

</comment><comment><USER9> From the article:

        I've been reviewing lot of code lately for various open
        source and internal projects written in Python. As part of
        those reviews, I have noticed what I think is a trend
        toward using dict() instead of {} to create dictionaries. I
        don't know exactly why this trend has emerged.

My guess for why this trend has emerged: People prefer javascripts object literal syntax where the attribute names are not quoted.

After writing javascript:

var o = { a: 1, b: 2};

... it feels a bit clunky to write Python:

o = { "a": 1, "b": 2}

<comment><USER10> How does using dict() solve the requirement for quotes that you've identified?

<comment><USER11> dict(foo='bar') becomes {'foo': 'bar'}, removing the need for quotes around the key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> PyCharm really irks me when it gives a warning when I declare an empty dictionary using a literal {} rather than the dict() global function.

It does the same thing with [] and list().

I'd rather just use what feels right at the time thanks, PyCharm.

<comment><USER13> Can't you just alter the settings for those code-warnings?

<comment><USER12> Oh wow you'e totally right :-)

It's under, "introspections" if anyone else is looking.</comment></comment></comment>


I'm in Kansas City for the month, who wants to grab a beer/coffee? - <AUTHOR>

You know, the Missouri side. <comment><AUTHOR> Just a random dev working remotely, looking for other random (or not so random) devs!</comment>


High-Performance SQL Cluster Engine for Scalable Data Virtualization - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pgspider/pgspider <comment><USER2> Ugh, it feels so wrong to read a 10+ MB .patch on github, instead of being a fork + a commit.

Using FDW to scale out data is a pretty popular approach, though it is hard to get a sense of the patch, this one looks a lot like a sharded postgres impl, reminds me of Redshift or Yahoo's Everest.

<comment><USER3> Actually, we should discuss how to contribution about the source code of PGSpider.

Regarding PGSpider, please refer the following slide.

[https://www.slideshare.net/Equnix/pgconfasia-2019-pgspider-h...](https://www.slideshare.net/Equnix/pgconfasia-2019-pgspider- high-performance-cluster-engine-shigeo-hirose)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone had any production experience using Foreign Data Wrappers to combine the performance of different database types into one facade? IE is it actually reasonable (and something people do) to hit bigquery for a large aggregation, Neo4j for a graph query, and Redis for k/v lookup as part of a single query fronted by postgres?

<comment><USER5> I haven't used FDW directly but I would suspect the performance would largely be related to how you can get pushdown and native usage within the source system. Combining data almost must be done on the master node.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It sounds to be a PrestoSQL-like solution based on the Postgresql FDW.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please feedback using PGSpider.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this similar to GreenPlum?</comment>


Facebook allows Force Joining of Groups - <AUTHOR> http://calacanis.com/2010/10/07/email-i-sent-to-zuckerberg-sheryl-over-force-join-groups-on-facebook/ <comment><USER2> I just deleted my Facebook profile a couple of weeks ago. I'm not one of those tinfoil hat privacy nazis who worry a lot about that kind of stuff, I just simply don't enjoy Facebook anymore and there's too much shady stuff going on. If you don't mind this then go ahead and use it to "connect with your friends" but personally I think Facebook became seriously uncool recently and I don't think that's going to change. I'm not boycotting or anything, I'm not mad at them, I just simply don't enjoy it anymore.

<comment><USER3> Heretic!

Seriously, though, can you elaborate on how Facebook 'became seriously uncool recently'?

What issues caused your loss of enjoyment?

<comment><USER2> It's complicated and should really be written as a long blogpost rant and not as a comment but I will try to summarize it. Basically the problems are twofold: things that are inherent to all social networks and things that are Facebook-specific.

One thing I noticed on social networks with a very large userbase (the definition of a social network having a very large userbase is my mum being registered on it) is that the more life you have, the less likely that you're using it, hence the more boring person someone is, the more they post/comment on social networks, hence most of the user-generated "content" on Facebook is incredibly boring. This is very different from "small" networks where most users are "cool", "trendsetter" people. Obviously this is an oversimplification and I have really interesting friends who are on Facebook all the time, but it's still a generic rule none the less and it makes the whole experience more boring.

My particular problem with Facebook is that I simply don't get what's going on; who can see what. I mean, which action of mine will be posted on my wall, who will be able to see it, etc. This may not sound very humble but I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person but still with all that brainpower I just can't tell whether my theoretical ex-girlfriend can see the photos of me that my theoretical current girlfriend of mine posted and if she can, how to disable it. I mean, these are everyday trivial problems that average people living a normal life face, this is not just being afraid of the government / snake headed aliens mining your super secret personal data. Do I really want to show my theoretical drunk party photos with my old headmistress from my elementary school? But then how do I share them with my closest friends? The whole thing is just too much hassle so I wouldn't ever bother posting interesting stuff. Which leads to most people (or at least the intelligent ones) only posting boring, "politically correct" things that wouldn't offend even their old headmistress. Which leads to boring content.

<comment><USER4> _"My particular problem with Facebook is that I simply don't get what's going on; who can see what. I mean, which action of mine will be posted on my wall, who will be able to see it, etc."_

Given their track record it is safe to assume that everything you do will be public. If not now, then at some point in the future.

<comment><USER5> This is pretty much what it's come to. But it's confusing in the midst of this slow bait-and-switch.

When I signed up for facebook, a big reason was the confirmation of "real- life" friends. Facebook was different than blogs or myspace because the network was "real". We were sharing with our real friends. This is becoming less and less the case. Which means privacy is slowly eroding in a non-obvious way. Sure I can just start assuming everything is completely public but 1) my friends/contacts don't always realize it and 2) without the real privacy, why not just move to blogs, etc. where it's clear?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reasoning here is the same as photo tagging, or wall posts. Friends can tag "you" in photos without your explicit acceptance of the tag. You have a much more powerful tool for preventing "prank" photo tags/wall posts/group joins than Facebook could ever invent technologically: social pressure. To wit, these people are nominally your friends; even if you've been somewhat promiscuous, and they're just your coworker, or acquaintance, or distant family member, you still have much more leverage over their behavior than Facebook ever will.

So, if Joe Idiot tags you in a photo of a goat, or joins you in an embarassing group: a) untag/unjoin yourself, and b) tell Joe THAT WAS NOT COOL. Optionally, unfriend Joe. I.e., exactly what you would have done if Joe wrote a blog post about your embarrassing medical problem, or put you on a mailing list you do not like.

<comment><USER7> I can choose in the privacy settings who sees what I'm tagged in. Specifically, I can say that tags are only seen by me, which would effectively turn off tagging. Can I do this with groups? I've tried, but can't seem to find it anywhere in the settings. If anyone knows, please share, I'm very interested in turning it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does Facebook have such a history of bad decisions like this?

I -just- rejoined Facebook yesterday due to the fact that I seemed to be missing out on too many opportunities by boycotting it, and my 6-month-long boycott has made absolutely no dent in their popularity.

<comment><USER9> Can you list some of the opportunities? I have an account, but no idea what to do with it.

<comment><USER10> As a facebook non-joiner myself, I find that I miss out on a lot of baby pictures, knowledge of other people's birthdays, and (a few) parties.

<comment><USER11> I would regard that as a benefit.

<comment><USER10> That reminds me of another effect: I am thought of as a person that regards missing these things as a benefit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A good first test to see whether something is possibly a bad idea is to give it to a 13 year old boy and see if he makes dick jokes with it. This feature seems ripe for the picking.

<comment><USER13> By that test, there are probably no good ideas at all. Except maybe the moms of 13 year-old boys.

<comment><USER14> Oh, they'll make jokes about those too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Surely I'm not the only one to notice that apparently Facebook users number "500 people and growing"?

<comment><USER16> Not only that, but he also spells the acronym two different ways "NABLA" and "NAMBLA", don't know which one is the actual name. You'd think he'd mildly proofread his writing right?

<comment><USER17> The screenshot says NAMBLA, so he actually misspelled it as NABLA twice.

<comment><USER18> It's North American Man/Boy Love Association, so NAMBLA. Don't you guys watch South Park?

<comment><USER19> South Park did not invent it; it is a real organization.

Try not to think about that too much, though.

<comment><USER18> I know it is; South Park popularised it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> However, from Facebook help center:

> Similar to being tagged in a photo, you can only be added to a group by one > of your friends.

Maybe you either don't really need 61532 "friends" or Facebook should have a distinction between Friends and contacts.

Not saying that's a reasonable feature, but still.

<comment><USER3> Everyone is an equal in Facebook, just like in real life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to suggest I disagree with JC, but in addition to advocating opt-in, he should have less shitty "friends".

<comment><USER22> or maybe stop baiting Aron Wall?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> People playing pranks like this was the first thing I thought of when I read the headlines about Facebook "streamlining" group membership. And yes, some of my actual friends would invite me to some very silly in-joke groups that I wouldn't voluntarily join.

The potential problems are reduced if these groups are private and _will remain_ private in future versions of Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER24> This isn't as bad as it looks.

Only your friends can add you into groups. You also don't have to participate in the group and they have made it very easy to leave. Jason is not a typical user and probably has a lot of crappy friends due to accepting requests from anyone. Adding an accept option would only add an unnecessary layer without changing much.

<comment><USER25> "Only your friends can add you into groups."

And how many of your "friends" are ACTUALLY your "friends"? As much as it was once fun to reconnect with somebody I shared an elementary-school classroom with, that's a connection I'll need to revisit if they're given the power to latch my profile onto whatever cause they want ... implying my support of that movement.

Facebook seems to have created Groups as their implementation of Twitter Lists. I can create a list and call it whatever I choose ... adding whomever I choose to it. But my sense is that the perception of a Facebook Group is different than a Twitter List because Facebook already has/had the concept of groups, and they DID require opt-in.

<comment><USER26> > And how many of your "friends" are ACTUALLY your "friends"?

100%, but I seem to be in a minority with that decision

<comment><USER27> I'd say about 70%.

The other 30% are family -- lord knows I'd defriend them in an instant if we didn't have to see each other on the holidays!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm sure Zuck and Sandberg went straight for the delete button on that email. "Oh its linkbait Calcanis ranting about something stupid and trolling for an Adviser gig."

Its so odd, I do really like JCal's stance on other issues (paid pitching groups) but his fb rants are annoying.

He should have wrote them a thank you letter for delivering an easy to use tool for exporting all content rather than just a simple PS mention.

<comment><USER29> No, in this case Calacanis had a point. Facebook shouldn't be allowing force joins to sketchy groups.

<comment><USER28> fb's is following their social design process of solving problems. the solution to someone joining you to a sketchy group is also solved by social design - you un-join, un-friend the person, and post quick status update stating you think the group is crap and call out the person that signed you up. Its not totally ideal but there are clear social repercussions for such bad behavior, which is an advantage of social design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Didn't Calacanis leave Facebook?

<comment><USER31> Exactly!! He made a big deal of it, saying he was done with it. People seem to have a bad memory!!

<comment><USER29> Just because he commented on the feature doesn't mean he's using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not sure if this is related. I clicked "like" on an article someone posted (or I thought was an article) and now new articles from that company seems to be showing up in my news feed. What's the deal with that?

<comment><USER33> It's not related, but when you like a page, the owner of that page can now post directly to your wall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm over Jason's constant Facebook trolling, it's distracting from his cool work with the startup scene.

</comment><comment><USER35> Unless you are POTUS, don't put your middle name in your email signatures. It's pretentious.

<comment><USER36> The whole sig struck me as over-the-top and obnoxious, personally. "HERE IS A LIST SHOWING HOW IMPORTANT I AM."

Hint - if you're really important, all you need to sign is your name.

<comment><USER37> Indeed.

~ epochwolf</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter taking on Trump's lies? About time too - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/twitter-taking-on-trumps-lies-about-time-too <comment><USER2> Twitter is endangering section 230 but I see no particular benefit to anyone to their action.

Trump's tweets receive multiple rebuttals and analyses in the press without twitter needing to hide or annotate then. What good have they done?

If on the other-hand, these actions end up enabling the removal of section 230 should Trump win a second term, they will have done one of the greatest disservices ever done to the US.</comment>


Eigenface - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface

<comment><USER2> I always thought that "Eigenman" would make a cool superhero. A man derived from the covariance matrix of the probability distribution of the high- dimensional vector space of _all of mankind_. His superpowers would be instant recognition of anyone he meets, self-supervised learning, and the ability to do a Karhunen–Loève transform in his head.

<comment><USER3> 5-part miniseries written by Joss Whedon and Randall Munroe. Dark Horse can publish it.

You'll be rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Principal component analysis at it's best. Works awfully well on most machine learning problems. Often PCA is not just enough by itself, so you run it before you run a more sophisticated algorithm (say k-Nearest-Neighbors, or Support Vector Machines). It helps in reducing the training time and execution time of those algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seeing the word Eigenface brings back chills from my senior year computer vision class. It wasn't that the class was not useful, it was just that the professor was painfully horrible. Although, the eigenface project at the end of the year was VERY interesting. If I can pull up the old code, maybe I'll put it up on github. It was MATLAB code</comment>


Study catches 2 bird populations as they split into separate species  - <AUTHOR> http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/research/Study_catches_2_bird_populations_as_they_split_into_separate_species.asp <comment><USER2> For some reason, this domain is redirecting to Bloomberg.com.</comment>


Hawk – a HTTP authentication scheme (used by Mozilla identity API) - <AUTHOR> http://alexbilbie.com/2012/11/hawk-a-new-http-authentication-scheme/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://hueniverse.com/](http://hueniverse.com/) is a great follow up post which provides a lot of extra information / background / scope</comment>


Show HN: Take any HTML and plug it into native app with JSON markup - <AUTHOR> https://jasonette.com/webcontainer <comment><USER2> Jasonette seems awesome from what I'm reading (I'm ignoring webcontainer)!

Does it work offline by default? Is the JSON app cached and updated again when the user is online?

What is preventing you from writing an HTML version of Jasonette, so apps written for Jasonette Native can run on a browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

> Does it work offline by default? Is the JSON app cached and updated again > when the user is online?

It's online default, hence the subtitle "Native app over HTTP". Think of it like a web browser for building native apps. Instead of HTML you use JSON markup.

That said, it also allows various ways of implementing offline [http://docs.jasonette.com/local/](http://docs.jasonette.com/local/)

> What is preventing you from writing an HTML version of Jasonette

Nothing! Stay in touch to hear more! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> In the end, is it possible to make a dumb version of an app that includes both the JSON and the Jasonette client? I guess most non-tech-savvy people will prefer something like that.</comment>


Careem has identified an incident involving unauthorised access to customer data - <AUTHOR> https://blog.careem.com/en/stories/uae/ksa/security/ <comment><USER2> It is ingenuine on their part to not report how detailed the trip data they have is. Trip data could easily show Users' home/office locations, their daily travel patterns, their kid's daycare and whatnot. This kind of knowledge can be extremely dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. Careem should be more straightforward about this and explain the consequences, rather than slyly gloss over the most dangerous part of the breach by mentioning only two effing words about it.

<comment><USER3> They also have only said when they figured out the breach, but not when the breach was. It could have happened a day before January 14th, or 3 months before January 14th. The difference is how much trust I would give them.

Interestingly they said the breach was done by "online criminals". Do they know, or do they automatically assume that people illegally accessing systems are criminals?

<comment><USER4> > Do they know, or do they automatically assume that people illegally > accessing systems are criminals?

I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to make here. The fact that they are doing something illegal makes them criminals.

<comment><USER5> >The fact that they are doing something illegal makes them criminals.

Not in all countries. In Canada at least, plenty of things are against the law (illegal) but do not constitute a criminal offence.

I'm not committing a crime when I break the speed limit almost every day on my way to work, but what I'm doing is still illegal.

<comment><USER6> Poor example, just a week ago a 19-year-old had his family's house raided for him scraping documents from a public gov't website.

[https://evandentremont.com/some-information-on-the- freedom-o...](https://evandentremont.com/some-information-on-the-freedom-of- information-hack/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny part! I wanted to delete my Careem account. I could not do that. I cannot delete my account.

[https://help.careem.com/hc/en- us/articles/115008681747-How-d...](https://help.careem.com/hc/en- us/articles/115008681747-How-do-I-delete-an-account-)

<comment><USER8> "A Careem account cannot be deleted as every account detail can only be used once." \- uh what?

So they've hashed your account details. They won't delete this. Great

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cmd+F "seriously"

"We take the protection of our customers and captains' data very seriously."

<comment><USER10> Exactly what I did when I opened the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well now.

 _What customer account data was stolen?

Customers' name, email address, phone number and trip data._

</comment><comment><USER12> The compromise was identified on January 14th, and the announcement took three months? That's a pretty appalling timeline.

</comment><comment><USER13> a friend ,who had a job interview with careem, told me i should use a different mobile number and name if I'm using their service. Glad i followed his advice.

</comment><comment><USER14> >January 14

Thanks for not telling anyone sooner.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why is Uber included in the title here? It makes it seem like Uber was involved. I think the title should mention, at most, the Careem is a Middle Eastern ridesharing company.

<comment><USER16> Ridesharing could also include long-distance ride-sharing like BlaBlaCar. Since Uber-for-X has become a thing, I don't think including Uber in the title is a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know it's difficult to find an appropriate title but wouldn't -

"Careem, ridesharing company/app in the Middle East"

work better than calling out Uber?

</comment><comment><USER18> Nothing to see here, its a minor breach.

<comment><USER19> Trip data can contain _extremely_ sensitive information.

<comment><USER20> They are also unsure whether passwords or credit card details were stolen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wonderful, hacking often means dumping one data store due to sec problem with it (think 90s-SQL-injection).

I assume trip data was stored in the same system as emails - so both got hacked. Minor security considerations would put those in different systems and not store together.</comment>


Review my idea: Preventing accidental usage /bin/rm - <AUTHOR>

The problem of accidentally deleting files using rm seems to common, dangerous and painful. Like here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661209.
I'm thinking of writing a 'replacement' utility of sorts for /bin/rm. I'll rename the existing rm command to say rmx or something and use my version of /bin/rm instead. When you type rm at the prompt, my replacement utility will actually move the files to a "Trash Can" in the file system, instead of deleting it it. And when you type, say 'rm --rm' it will by pass the Trash can and delete the file. And something like 'rm --restore [filename]' will restore the file to its original location.
This way accidental deletions are prevented. Does a utility like this exist already, so that I don't re-invent the wheel? <comment><USER2> I do this sort of thing a lot, not as a formalized utility but as a practice. For example I'll often do something like this:

      mv data ~/tmp/
      cd ~/tmp/
      rm -rf data

At least when I'm in the tmp directory I can see that clearly on the command line so I'm more comfortable issuing dangerous commands.

I suppose there might be room for a formal utility, but sometimes you just have to be careful. Take for example my "build" script for Fexl (at <https://github.com/chkoreff/Fexl/blob/master/src/build>). There you will see these lines:

      # I don't use $obj and $bin here because that would be dangerous if I made
      # a mistake setting them above.
      rm -rf ../obj
      rm -rf ../bin

If I were not being so careful, I could simply say:

      rm -rf $obj
      rm -rf $bin

Because after, all, the $obj and $bin variables are "guaranteed" to point to safely disposable directories. Heh. Famous last words. Redundancy is key to reliability.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is libtrash (<http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~marriaga/software/libtrash/>), which does something very similar. It adds a library to your LD_PRELOAD variable which intercepts unlink syscalls and moves deleted files to $HOME/Trash instead of actually deleting them. The nice thing about this is that it works transparently, and not just for /bin/rm, but for anything that deletes files.

That's not to say it couldn't be improved upon, though.

</comment><comment><USER4> Or you could just be responsible with your rm commands.

Also keep good backups. As soon as I read the article it reminded me to plug in my 2tb drive and run timemachine.</comment>


UC Berkeley plan to test freshmen DNA criticized - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRnonozkqI3lZkKJ-88_mIdWc73gD9FR6OKG0

<comment><USER2> > Critics, however, worry that students could get the idea the school approves > of widely available direct-to-consumer gene-testing kits that claim to > predict the risk of future health problems

Presuming it's accurate, I really don't see the problem with it. It's (in theory) just a more sophisticated, accurate method of predication than we've had in the past.

I can't imagine any health risks to ring the alarm bells about either- I haven't heard of any breaking research that shows taking saliva samples or cheek swabs to be carcinogenic for example.

I especially like that Berkeley's claimed goal is simply to get students talking about it.

I'm familiar with the fears people have- designer babies, genetic discrimination, health insurance- but it seems really silly to advocate the medical equivalent of sticking our fingers in our ears and going 'lalalala I can't hear you'

<comment><USER3> The problem is not that the kits cannot accurately read off your DNA; they do an admirable job of that. The problem is that our knowledge of the impact of any particular allele is exceedingly incomplete.

Without a clinical trial validating these tools, most of us in the field find it to be inappropriate to advise someone as to their risk profile on the basis of direct-to-public kits. (I'm not talking about the BRCA tests or other validated, gene-specific tests - I'm talking about 23andMe-style genome-wide kits.)

Particularly for complex (polygenic) traits, these throw you into a minefield. Consider two modes of error: (1) The test indicates impending illness. (2) The test indicates no impending illness / good longevity. For (1), imagine that you have a disease-predisposing allele that the kit catches, which is why it thinks you'll be sick. But it doesn't catch (since these kits only target 1/10,000th of the genome) some other allele that protects you from the same disease. So you inappropriately worry about the disease. If disease risk is modifiable by behavior (such as exercise), perhaps it encourages you to work out more often. But, perhaps it will make you feel like you cannot overcome your genetic destiny, so you don't work out at all. The prophecy would then be self-fulfilling.

For (2), imagine that the testing kit sees that you have a few protective alleles for disease X - but you also have a novel mutation that is private to your family and not found in the general population. The testing company has no idea that this exists, and it obviously won't be on these testing kits (which overwhelmingly track common, not rare, variants). So now you end up getting disease X a few years down the road, despite all evidence from the kit suggesting that you'd never get it.

These are my two favorite failure modes, though there are plenty of others. At the end of the day, although I'm in the field of human genetics, I'm not going to be advising people to get these kits until there are clinical trials validating specific risk predictions. (I'm not saying _not_ to use the kits - but I am saying that it's going to be more for fun than for accurate medical prediction. For now.)

<comment><USER2> When I said 'accurate' I meant the conclusions they draw based on your DNA sequence. From what you are saying, it sounds like (in this sense of the word 'accurate') they are not, so my point is invalid :)

<comment><USER3> The good thing is that, with each passing day, my point becomes less valid, and yours more so. The bad thing is that it will probably be a decade or more until your original point is more valid than mine. I'm in this field and would love for it to have the accuracy that many people think it already does! :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Celebrating Stephen Hawking - <AUTHOR> https://plus.maths.org/content/celebrating-stephen-hawking <comment><USER2> When he was in Cambridge, where I am based, it was common to see him around. Not long ago I was at a conference on the rise of fundamentalisms, and he was 5m from me. I found it incredibly inspiring that he'd be there, obviously engaged and interested, despite his physical condition.

We've made a map of the stars commemorating him, in case anyone is interested. The high-res download is here:

[https://greaterskies.com/stephen-hawking-star- map/](https://greaterskies.com/stephen-hawking-star-map/)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are many reasons to celebrate Stephen Hawking but the one I personally am most impressed by his ability overcome an ALS diagnosis in his college years and go on to live a life of such distinction. It takes some serious courage to soldier on after hearing you may only have two years to live and know that at best you will live a life of slow & debilitating physical deterioration. I'm not sure I could face a such a prospect, so many of the things I enjoy in life require full motor skills and then some. I'd like to think I could adapt and follow such a bold example provided by Stephen Hawking. His story is truly inspiring to me and I hope his story inspires others to do great things.

<comment><USER4> I read his book, and it seems like his wife should take most of the credit for his survival. Too bad she doesn't seem to get recognition for what she had to go through to help him.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure about the "most", and she does get recognition. [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/14/stephen- hawk...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/14/stephen-hawking- obituary):

 _"It is clear that he owed a great deal to his first wife, Jane Wilde, whom he married in 1965 […]. Jane was exceptionally supportive of him in many ways. One of the most important of these may well have been in allowing him to do things for himself to an unusual extent."_</comment></comment></comment>


Science saved me from pretending to love wine - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-science-saved-me-from-pretending-to-love-wine <comment><USER2> Great article. I share many of the tastes of the author (e.g. "Coffee was drinkable—in fact, positively delicious—only with milk and sugar" and "I couldn't imagine why anyone would eat a radish unless paid") but I don't have an aversion to wine.

What I have an aversion to is people who want to talk endlessly about wine. Or people who pretend they'd actually bother with wine in the first place if it didn't give them a buzz. Or anyone who expects me to spend more than five bucks a bottle (ok I can go as high as ten if it's a restaurant).

Aside from the whole issue of genetic differences between people and their fungiform papillae, I think the one line that gets to the heart of why people get so obsessive about wine is "no other pursuit made him feel farther from the lower-middle-class neighborhoods of immigrant Brooklyn from which he had worked so hard to escape".

<comment><USER3> If you don't know anything about wine, the safest thing is to just go with what you like. And this means first and foremost ignoring price and prestige even if you'll be called a philistine.

One thing about wine I really enjoy is that there are so many different tastes available, and that tastes may vary by year.

If you're still exploring your preferences, I'd recommend to stay below 30€/bottle (reseller price, not restaurant) and try a lot of different ones (not necessarily on the same evening thought).

<comment><USER4> > the safest thing is to just go with what you like.

I have never tasted a wine I liked. Ever. At best some were tolerable. The sweeter the better.

Dry wines taste absolutely disgusting. Like someone collected filth and put it in a bottle to trick people (the emperor has no clothes).

I once tried adding sugar to a dry wine to see if I could taste those flavor notes the bottle said they contained. It helped a bit, but not much.

Like a color blind person not believing color really exists, I have a hard time believing people that they actually like the stuff.

<comment><USER5> Some of us don't like sweet things. All the best flavours are sharp or sour.

<comment><USER6> > All the best flavours are sharp or sour.

That's an extremely subjective statement.

<comment><USER7> The thread is pretty much full of subjective statements, many posed as universal truths.

My contribution: Blueberry wine is delicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It honestly sounds like the author is desensitized to sweetness and dislikes bitter things in general. It's amazing how cutting out sugar/added sweeteners in general can greatly increase ones sense of taste. A little sweet can go a very long way. After a few months without sugar, eating a typical U.S. sweet treat feels like complete overload.

I've noticed this in a lot of my friends also. The ones that have attempted cut out sugar have all experienced the same.

Of course she could just dislike wine, which is completely fine. But all of the other things mentioned lead me to believe this might be a part of it.

<comment><USER9> After two months of living(in Italy) off spaghetti with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese I noticed, that ketchup started to taste for me a lot more like some kind of weird, sweet(too sweet even) BBQ sauce than, well, ketchup.

<comment><USER10> I'd imagine you also noticed how sweet most tomato sauce is in the US! I don't make pizza much at home, but for pasta sauce I always make my own. I can't stand the store bought sauce.

<comment><USER11> You could try Paul Newman's pasta sauce. They're not too sweet, and the profits go to charity. (I'm not aware of the full detail, but the company has been around a long time so I give them the benefit of the doubt).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wine is just the McGuffin here - the article is really about bourgeois insecurity, resolved by the author's redemption through discovering that she is actually more discriminating than the people whose approval she so desperately seeks.

<comment><USER13> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I was a kid I used to play with "Creepy Crawlers" which was a form of liquid PVC that you'd put on a mini hot plate, pour into a mold, and as it cured it would give off a smell that I always remembered. So as an adult I find that certain wines give off that same smell. I've tried to explain this to people who know wine but so far no one has had that "aha!" moment, I assume it's some type of long-chain polymer formed by the phenols in the grape skins.

<comment><USER2> If you want people to understand it, you probably need to pack your Creepy Crawler kit next time you go to a party, and give a demonstration.

<comment><USER14> There is still a very active trade on eBay.

[http://www.ebay.com/bhp/plastigoop](http://www.ebay.com/bhp/plastigoop)

<comment><USER2> I'm tempted. Love that kind of stuff. And now I'm really curious about the smell. :)

<comment><USER14> I can only describe it as "chemical-ey". I think there are several "notes" in red wine that fall into that group (red wine is different from white, because the skins stay on longer in the process).

In my case my dad was into wood-working so my childhood memories include all sorts of solvents and other chemicals that had complex aromatics. So when I pick up a memory when I'm drinking wine, I know there's "something" going on at the molecular level, I just don't know what it is.

I don't think anyone knows in some cases, I mean the wine industry employs chemists, obviously, but no one can really put their finger on how wine develops and changes over time. That's why it's more of a craft than a science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am unsurprised that differences in the palate are influenced by genetics. I'm one of those people where smell is very poignant for me and I notice small differences, and yet when tasting wines it was a fairly narrow group of wines that I liked versus ones I could really care less about.

A friend of mine told me about their personal experience which was that they felt that most wine tasted the same (with broad confines like all reds and all whites) but that after they gave up sugar, wine became a completely different beverage. They related that after two months without sugar in their diet not only did potatoes taste as sweet as candy had before they gave up sugar, wine opened up in astonishing ways.

It's on my list to replicate this experiment to see if an abundance of sugar in the diet masks many interesting flavors in wine.

<comment><USER16> This is a somewhat surprising change as I went through a drastic diet change about 10 years ago as a result of depression and a bout of anorexia; my diet became almost exclusively vegetarian with almost no sweets (mostly tea with an occasional splash of milk for drinks), and I had a similar result. Before I wouldn't touch alcohol, and cakes from Cheesecake factory couldn't be sweet enough for my taste.

Now such sweets are overpowering to me and the though of the taste alone is a bit revolting to my mind. (nevermind the calorie count of one slice of that carrot cake). But wines suddenly had some depth to them, and I could finally notice the difference between an okayish bottle of wine and what they used to water down for us at communion when I was a kid. Vegetables also just suddenly had a whole depth of flavor tied just to the vegetable itself, and Frozen or underripened vegetables stood out as very poor tasting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sigh. Being a supertaster isn't a scientific explanation for not liking wine. It just means if you don't like wine you are more likely to dislike it a lot.

By the definition, I am a supertaster. I know this because I once had a virus that made the papillae on my tongue swell and I couldn't eat anything for a week. My doctors all exclaimed how many "taste buds" I had and I must taste foods very strongly. I do - I rarely need seasonings - even salt and pepper - or heavy sauces. I eat pretty simple and enjoy (or despise) flavors.

But I love wine and many other strong/sour/acidic/fermented foods. Love dark chocolate. Lemons. Bitter green teas. I suppose I would love these as a medium or light taster too.

On the other hand, I hate coffee, sauerkraut, blue cheese and some other strong foods. I suppose I would hate these as a medium or light taster too. Just maybe not as fervently.

<comment><USER2> Is it possible that not all supertasters are alike? But that being a supertaster is still relevant to differentiation between people's preferences for wine?

<comment><USER17> I'm sure there are variations. But the idea of a supertaster is that tastes are more pronounced. So strong/acidic foods can be off-putting. But it's still not the "cause" for not liking a food, more of a degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Somewhat disappointed, since I don't like wine either and I was hoping this could help explain why, but my tastes seem to be diametrically opposed to the author's. I even like strong alcohol of other sorts- I've recently grown to like whiskey, since >10% beer is hard to find in my area.

The frustrating thing is that there is a _very definite_ aspect of wine that makes me dislike it, but as far as I've been able to determine that same taste doesn't appear anywhere else, so I've never been able to describe to anyone what that is.

The science here makes me wonder, though, if someday someone will popularize a quantitative framework for people's differing tastes. Imagine an app where you take a picture of your tongue and it categorizing your taste-sensitivity on however many fronts, and recommends a restaurant. Or via a genetic test- 23andme could pay for some of its customers to take Dr Marks' taste-test- battery, and work out the correlations. People love to be categorized, and here's a way to do it that's directly impactful on their everyday lives (and in particular, on a _social_ aspect of their lives.)

<comment><USER19> Indeed! Actually I'm quite surprised that with all the competition and snobbery going on at Michelin-star level restaurants, there's no restaurant that tunes their tasting menu to the guest's individual perception. Even a genetic test is probably feasible now, but at least a picture of the tongue and a questionnaire. I think there's a huge business opportunity here. "Crisp Paupiettes of Sea Bass in Barolo Sauce" sounds posh, but it could sound even more posh "finely tuned to the perception of those extremely sensitive to chestnut tannins".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't believe in this cilantro soap trope. Cilantro distinctly tastes like soap to me... and is delicious. I'm pretty sure it's just an odd taste that some people enjoy and some people don't. I used to hate it, now I love it, it tastes the same.

<comment><USER21> I mean... it's not just a trope, it's OR6A2[1]. But yes you're broadly correct that the overall taste is the same. Some people are just much more sensitive to particular compounds in it.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OR6A2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OR6A2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I feel like all the same snobbery and nonsense is common now regarding craft- beer and I have all the same feelings about it as the author does for wine...

<comment><USER23> I tend to roll my eyes and ignore such things, except for one frustratingly- common case: pretty much _all_ stouts and porters (which are among the few beers I actually like) are described as tasting of coffee.

The problem is, I find coffee absolutely horrendous (I get my stereotypical- hacker caffeine fix from energy drinks), so it's often hard to tell whether actual coffee has been added during brewing process (which is quite common for stouts), resulting in a horrible drink with an accurate description; or whether it's a lazy 'tasting note' which is completely unrelated to the actual, potentially nice, flavour of the drink.

<comment><USER24> I know a person who grew to love stouts and porters, but then for medical reasons had to give up all caffeine. It's awfully hard to figure out which of those beers contain caffeine from coffee, and which just have coffee-like flavors. This person has mostly sworn off such beers in order to avoid the risk of drinking one with caffeine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like this article told more about the people reading and writing at The NewYorker than anything else. The lexical field is fascinating.

<comment><USER26> What did you learn about them?

<comment><USER25> That not enjoying wine can be a profound experience that makes one search for meaning involving philosophers, politicians, multiple countries, mathematics, science, music, history, art, and social intrigue spanning dozens of people.

<comment><USER27> Haha, I came to the same conclusion. The article was a lot of words to say "I don't like wine, so I'm not going to drink it anymore."

<comment><USER28> It was about much more than that -- a child's relationship with parents, self- esteem, the American Dream, and social class, among other things.

As with many things (like academic papers) the meat is in the footnotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've always thought alcohol is a waste of good sugar :). I have very little bitter taste so it isn't that wine tastes particularly bad to me, just that grape juice tastes much better.

I do like cooking with lots of vinegar since it tastes sweet to me, but it seems like few people have similar taste (but I know of at least one relative who had a similar taste). What we eat regularly can also affect body odor and I'd guess this is a big part of why many people list smell as on of or the most important factors in attraction.

I've noticed that for me even mild dehydration makes my sense of taste briefly much more sensitive, to the point that there seem to be dozens of flavors in a glass of tap water that normally I wouldn't distinguish much of anything in. It only lasts about three sips and may be partially due to my chronic health issues that seem to sensitize me to many things, but it is interesting how strong of an effect it is.

</comment><comment><USER30> "I started thinking about other foods I didn't like. Capers. Kimchi. Cloves. Pepper. Kale. Coffee was drinkable—in fact, positively delicious—only with milk and sugar. Seltzer required enough discreet mouth-sloshing to subdue the effervescence. And I couldn't imagine why anyone would eat a radish unless paid. It was more like a bee sting than a vegetable."

That's too bad! These spices and foods are all among my favorites. I'm curious what flavors the author enjoys most given her taste receptor situation.

"I dislike—in some cases, hate, hate, hate!—many fruits, and had not eaten a peach or a banana since I was a child, though I had smelled them, with displeasure ..."

This wasn't addressed in the article, but are bitterness receptors involved with tasting fruits? Although it seems more likely the 23andMe test doesn't identify taste variations that involve those flavors. Or maybe those dislikes are just unrelated to biology.

<comment><USER31> She listed major staples of my diet and I still can't finish a glass of wine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've thought a lot about the subjectivity of taste, and I've come to the conclusion that it's one of those things like the Blue/Gold Dress Illusion that is perceived fundamentally differently by different people, and each group lives their lives in complete ignorance of the others. I'm also convinced that taste is a spectrum: a series of distributions which overlap between the different tasting groups.

When I met my now-fiancee, she was certainly what you would call a picky eater (not "only grilled cheese for dinner" picky, but in the general vicinity). As a self-styled "adventurous eater", I figured I'd try to get her to like more foods. It's worked, kind of. I think she's moved higher on her taste spectrum (towards more flavors) but still tastes things distinctly differently than me. She loves kale now, but most bitter greens and some veg are disgustingly bitter (as are tonic drinks). Puzzlingly to me, she's also become a cheese fanatic, devouring even the most aggressive raw-milk washed-rind cheese and hot blue cheeses that I personally find a bit much. And, to draw it back to the article, she's learned to enjoy wine. Whites are preferred over reds, but even then she has liked reds with softer tannins and bigger fruit tastes.

I also think a big part of the taste spectrum is that of texture. In my fiancee's experience many foods like steak or poached fish or soup in general may taste delicious, but the texture itself is off-putting enough to make the food unpalatable. Wine of course doesn't have this problem (except in a limited way of mouthfeel, body, tannin structure). All in all, taste seems to be immensely personal and complicated with a lot of different factors besides "brussels sprouts are too bitter".

It makes me wonder if there could be some analytical way to determine the salt/sugar/acid needed to add to a dish to make it taste comparatively similar between people from different parts of the tasting spectrum. Like color gamut calibration, but for food!

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea I don't think I'm a supertaster because I like wine, capers, black coffee, and, in fact, most "strong" things. But I don't like coriander/cilantro. I'm one of those people for whom it tastes like soap. I had also heard of a thing called a "highly sensitive person" and I would rather attribute my dislike of coriander to that. I just notice that, in general, I am far more sensitive than many people. I hear things, see things, and taste things that others don't. And, like the author of this article, I don't say it to brag because it's actually very often a liability. I can be irritated by something which nobody else will notice.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have to admit the only wine that I ever thought was special was Petrus.

I'm also fairly sure that if they weren't labelled differently, I wouldn't be able to tell much difference between two red grapes or two whites. I'm a bit cynical about other's ability to do so as well, but politeness prevents me from expressing it. Sometimes it's good to have something to talk about, so you let the group's wine connoisseur go on about the provenance of whatever you're drinking.

<comment><USER34> > I wouldn't be able to tell much difference between two red grapes or two > whites. . I'm a bit cynical about other's ability to do so as well

Are you also cynical about other's ability to tell apart Dr Pepper from Coca Cola? Or Black tea from coffee? Because they're a lot more similar than many wine variations.

<comment><USER33> I don't think I've come across anyone who's considered themselves a soft drink connoisseur before, so what is there to be cynical about? Plenty of people will tell you they're into wines, and they will give you accounts of the growing seasons in particular years and places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow, I never knew why I hated the taste of wine, while everyone else were so eager to drink. To me, it tastes bitter, except for champagne. This article might mean that I might be super-taster, even though I had never considered it, since I cannot distinguish a lot of food.

Anyway, I just ordered PTC (PROP) strip from Amazon. It turns out it can be purchased for less than $10. I'm so curious to see where I stand, and if it turns out I am a super taster, I might need to change my diet.

</comment><comment><USER36> So, wine tasting and culture have always been with us, right?

Um, actually, not really:

"wine tasting"

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=wine+tasting&y...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=wine+tasting&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwine%20tasting%3B%2Cc0)

"fine wine"

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fine+wine&year...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fine+wine&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfine%20wine%3B%2Cc0)

"wine collection / wine collector"

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=wine+collectio...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=wine+collection%2C+wine+collector&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwine%20collection%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cwine%20collector%3B%2Cc0)

</comment><comment><USER37> Being a supertaster doesn't mean you end up being a picky eater. It's entirely possible to acclimate to foods and drinks that you originally detested. For me, I spent years forcing myself to drink beer before it barely became tolerable. I also force myself to eat brussel sprouts when they show up (such as christmas). I do the same for olives, pineapple, coffee, wine, etc. Nowadays when I order from subway, I always ask for "everything", it's great to get a mix of things that I don't really like with the things I do.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm 32 years old and I hate eating vegetables (with the exception of lettuce and celery, since they're practically tasteless). I've sheepishly described myself as a "kids menu eater", though I wonder if perhaps there's a biological excuse for my aversion. I also hate spicy foods... maybe I'm a supertaster? Then again, I like salty foods, so maybe not...

<comment><USER39> It's interesting to me that you find celery tasteless. I can't stand the flavor myself but I'll eat Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower all day long.

Not to mention wasabi, horseradish and other pungent foods.

Can I ask how you feel about garlic?

<comment><USER38> This thread is blowing my mind... I thought celery was super inoffensive, essentially the watermelon of vegetables. (Now I'm curious what you think about watermelon!)

Re: garlic, I'm a fan.

<comment><USER39> Watermelon makes my teeth itch. I don't know how else to describe it.

I think strawberries are the closest I have to your watermelon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interesting article, but it's not particularly notable that someone wouldn't like "big" wines (those with lots of alcohol and tannins). Those wines are better aged, and even when consumed, are better with something that can stand up to the strong flavours; well-charred, fatty steak is the classic pairing for these wines, and it is very good. In fact, this association could be why so many people like these wines.

</comment><comment><USER41> Taste isn't really a matter of taste.

(That is, the way we use the word "taste" figuratively is rather inappropriate.)

<comment><USER2> While there are genetic components (and various other things that can be physically explained) to taste, that's true of a great many preferences, that is, those that we use the word "taste" to figuratively describe.

But their are also psychological elements to it, many of which are cultural. So you might like wine, or speed metal, or gangsta rap, or Tolkien, or caviar, or saunas, or any number of other things through a complex combination of genetics and the culture you've been exposed to.

<comment><USER41> But I think flavour is an outlier here.

If I like different music to you, I think very little of the difference is in the ears and almost all of it is in the mind.

One reason why I think this matters is that the brain is mutable, and it's very likely that I could learn to like a kind of music that I don't like at the moment. Maybe I could also learn to like a flavour that I dislike at the moment, but I probably couldn't learn to care much about a flavour that I can barely detect.

<comment><USER2> Of course "flavor" also includes things in the nose i.e. olifactory system, and I'd guess that most things that people talk about with wine are happening there. So yes, there are genetic differences that affect taste probably more than hearing, at least at the actual sensory organ.

But the other thing to remember is that the brain is physical too, and can be subject to genetic differences. It's just that we probably understand how the tongue affects taste more than we can understand how the brain affects other preferences (including flavor)....because the brain is so ridiculously complicated and interconnected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Too long of an article for an author trying to rationalize not liking wine. You don't like it, get over it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Hate radishes. Love wine, black coffee, and spicy food. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder what percentage of Michellin starred chefs are supertasters? I have to follow recipes to a T because I can't really taste if it needs more something, I just follow the recipe and if it doesn't taste good I look for another recipe. I guess this article explains why I enjoy spicy food a lot more than most people.

</comment><comment><USER45> my dad is a chef - he taught me 2 rules for wine:

1\. Drink what you like 2\. You will always sound like a pretentious douchebag talking about wine

I find these to be universally true.

</comment><comment><USER46> But what about the people to who cilantro tastes as soap? Are they sensitive tasters overall, or is cilantro an orthogonal issue?

<comment><USER36> That point is addressed in the article, as it pertains to the author specifically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Her father was an asshole for implying that there is something wrong with people who don't like wine.

</comment><comment><USER48> I expected that she couldn't stand wine because of the histamine and sulfites! slightly disappointed.

<comment><USER49> The vast majority of people I've met who claim to have a problem with sulfites in wine have zero problem consuming sulfites in other foods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I just don't think it's a good idea to so closely relate taste and identity. And let's not even get into the "first-rate brain" stuff, ay yi yi.

<comment><USER28> There was a bit of tongue-in-cheek tone to the article, as common in the New Yorker. I wouldn't read the first-rate brain bit as you did. It was a joke.

<comment><USER51> If you assume the New Yorker is joking every time they engage in smug class signaling, it does become much easier to stomach. But I'm not the person you're responding to and it really didn't sound like a joke to me either.

<comment><USER28> Usually, describing oneself as being second-rate is an attempt at self- deprecating humor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Here's some science to save you from pretending to love any liquor: alcohol naturally tastes bad, probably because it's poisonous.

That's why so many flavors are added to it—to mask the bad taste of ethanol. Wanting to "get a buzz" is stupid. Go for a run.

That's what I think.

<comment><USER53> And yet I have to explain to every new person every time why I don't drink alcohol :( "It tastes bad" "But have you tried X cocktail/drink/whatever?" "No, but I don't need to, the alcohol tastes too bad to be masked".

Hell, I've returned desserts because they contained liqueur. I can't stand it.

<comment><USER54> Alcohol (including beer) is an acquired taste, but with no good reason to acquire the taste. It is exactly like smoking. If you have not forced yourself to like if when you were young and stupid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H impressionable, then there is no good reason to start later in life.

(The same can be said about coffee and tea, but those have arguably good reasons to acquire the taste; i.e. a cheap way to get caffeine.)

<comment><USER55> What do you find is the benefit of caffeine that couldn't be said of nicotine or alcohol?

Obviously they have different effects, but the people using each of those various drugs find the effect desirable.

Also, what's the point of starting caffeine later in life? AFAIK studies show that people who use no caffeine are generally more energetic/alert than those who use it regularly; it only works in the short-term.

I also think there have been studies that show both wine and coffee can be good for your health, so there's that, too.

<comment><USER56> Re: Coffee, you need to cycle it periodically to restore your sensitivity to it.

Drink one 8-12oz cup of it every morning, take a week off once a month, do not drink an entire pot no matter how much you'll be tempted to.

<comment><USER53> I never drink coffee (hate the taste, similar to alcohol), and am plenty energetic throughout the day. I regularly go to sleep at 6am if I'm working on some side-project, and that's only because I don't want to wake up very very late the next day.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


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